


Inevitable Possibilities

by Paper0wl



Series: Rod and Shield [23]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s06e15 The French Mistake, Episode: s06e17 My Heart Will Go On, It's All Gabriel's Fault, Metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 20:32:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7068979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paper0wl/pseuds/Paper0wl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Gabriel's peculiar variety of non-disclosure, non-confrontational tactics results in the devil's daughter experiencing an alternate reality where she's a character in a television show.</p>
<p>Based on comic books.</p>
<p>Because her life wasn't complicated enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Once her wow-time-travel-really-sucks headache cleared, Dawn threw herself into getting Peggy up to date with her temporal relocation. Darcy was ecstatic to have someone new to design an entire history and pop culture movie collection for, having refined the best choices through repeated usage.

 Ninja explanations were rather more involved, even after determining Elliot Crane was a phoenix in addition to having been drugged.

 "Someone randomly managed to drug a non-human?" Dawn asked, alarm spiking.

 Gabriel waved it off. "I took care of it. Sixty . . . ish years ago? They got lucky, but they didn't live long enough to tell anyone. And then your friend was nice enough to leave me out of the file before she closed it."

 She really shouldn't have been surprised Gabriel had met Andrea; were it not for the fact that Director Kormos had been rather pleased when Kyria Lux joined SHIELD, she might actually have been worried. She wouldn’t wish Gabriel on anyone, much less a friend.

 While grateful Dawn had prevented him from doing anything worse, Crane was understandably upset by what had happened – why were variations on mind control so common? Maybe she should get Gabriel to do something about _that_ – and less than comfortable around non-humans. "No one really likes me much," he said, awkwardly eying the eclectic mix of terrestrial and non-terrestrial humans and non-humans currently occupying the Prophet's House.

 "The phoenix was the 'oops' of monsters," Gabriel said around a mouthful of M&M's.

 "Then I am certain he will fit right in here," Loki drawled.

 "Most likely," Becky agreed cheerfully.

 So Crane was swallowed up by the welcoming craziness of the House Party and ended up joining Peggy in "Welcome to the Twenty-First Century" Orientation.

 The final sign the phoenix had been adopted was when Bela came downstairs about a week and a half after they woke up from the ordeal of the surprise breakfast landing, declared, "We need your help with some pyrotechnics," and proceeded to kidnap him.

 "What are they doing upstairs?" Peggy asked, as confused by the twenty-first century as she was by the actions of her (temporary) housemates.

 "Gabriel's version of therapy," Eleanor said.

 "And what's that?" Dawn asked, intrigued by the idea of the often violent and apathetic trickster attempting to assume the role of therapist. It surely involved something completely off the wall like –

 "He made a holodeck and James is working out his issues by shooting fictional Nazis," Becky announced with even more than her usually excessive amount of enthusiasm.

 "Figures."

 In addition to his unorthodox therapeutic practices, Gabriel had somehow managed to collect what Bela described as "one clueless little baby angel who can't seem to understand his superiors were lying through their teeth, one supremely annoying angel who acts like a teenager told his parents went away for a weekend, and one confused angel whose human experiences in no way prepared her for the mess that is the shifting new angelic reality."

 In her personal experience, Castiel occasionally slipped and called her "abomination," Balthazar was an incorrigible flirt, and the only reason Gabriel found Anna's grace before her was because temporal mechanics facilitated cheating. (He only knew about Anna and her grace and her tree because he got it from Dawn while visiting her dreams back in time. Totally cheating.)

 It did explain why the tree was empty when she (Kyria Lux) found it though.

 Given that her history with angels usually involved them trying to kill her and the rather unsettling fact that the last time angels had been divided her father had been leading a civil war in Heaven, Dawn mostly tried not to think too much about the three (two and a half) additional angels ostensibly following her instead of Heaven. It helped to think of them as one of Gabriel's Crazy Stunts.

 Of course that meant she didn't react fast enough when Balthazar dropped by while she was attempting to educate Peggy on the sixty years of history she missed, drew a sigil on the back window of Chuck's living room while announcing, "This was Gabriel's idea and I'm really sorry," and then sent the two of them flying through the window.

 Instead of landing on grass and broken glass, Dawn crashed into something that reminded her of the training mats in the gym, except thicker and less practical.

 As they struggled upwards, there were also far too many people around.

 "Peggy," Dawn said, brushing fake glass and hair from her face, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

 Someone yelled, "Cut!" and everyone started moving.

 Someone else patted Peggy's butt, much to her affront. "Real good solid fall. Way to go."

 "Valerie, Hayley!" the cut-guy called. "Outstanding. I really liked your adlibbing there at the end. Really sold the shot. That was just great."

 Someone carrying a movie clapperboard announced, "Supernatural, scene one echo, take one. Tail slate. Marker!"

 ***

 "What just happened?" Peggy asked.

 "Um." Dawn side-eyed their surroundings. "Have you ever been undercover?"

 "Yes, of course."

 "Pretend we're undercover in, uh, Hollywood."

 "I've done that before," Peggy remarked.

 "Not like this, you haven't."

 The man with the snapperboard said Supernatural. Carver Edlund's book series was called "Supernatural." But Chuck followed the Winchesters and they hadn't been at the house recently, nor did she know of a reason for them to decide to visit. Balthazar said this was Gabriel's idea; neither angel had any more reason than usual to pop in on the Winchesters and Gabriel's Nazi holodeck therapy certainly wouldn't feature Sam or Dean. Becky was tossing around the idea of a Kyria-focused spin-off series, though, and Dawn had a sinking feeling she had just landed in it.

 This was a television show about her. Well, a fictional version of her. Which was one, really insane, and two, hardly surprising.

 "I think we're actresses portraying ourselves," Dawn hypothesized, wishing she knew why Gabriel decided to play this sort of twisted prank on them – well, her. "Just go with it."

 "Hayley! Come on, let's get you in the chair," a make-up artist said, coming up with a tissue in one hand, a brush in the other, and herding Peggy away.

 An interviewer grabbed Dawn's hand with a "Valerie! Three minutes, okay? Great," and dragged her in front of a camera.

 "Trish Evian here with Valerie McCartney from TV's Supernatural. So, Valerie, season seven."

 "What about it?" Dawn asked with a friendlier version of the smile she used when somebody asked what she did for SHIELD.

 "You opened this season by going back in time to meet your long-dead love. In the comics, after losing Matthias for the second time Kyria Morningstar spiraled into madness, leading to her challenging Lilith and taking the throne in Hell, before Joshua brings Matthias back and sends him down with the Vision to try to reason with her. Does that mean you're going to be the major villain this season?"

 There were so many things wrong with that statement that Dawn didn't even know where to begin. The part about her life being a television show based on comic books of all things was probably the part that made the most sense.

 Somewhere, Murphy was laughing his ass off.

 "Well, far be it for me to spoil the rest of the season," she temporized. "We wouldn't have much of a show if I did that." Trish laughed, and Dawn laughed with her, somehow managing not to sound as hollow and brittle as she felt.

 "You were an agent of SHIELD until last season's two-part finale 'Out of the Shadows' / 'Into the Light' which played nicely on your character's light-themed aliases. After SHIELD fell, when you were back in 1950, you still identified yourself as an agent of SHIELD. How do you reconcile yourself to the fact that the ninjas officially separated from SHIELD in your absence? Does that change how you think of your character?"

 "I understand the reasoning behind cleaning breaking the ninjas from SHIELD and I fully support it," Dawn replied firmly. Aside from the fact that SHIELD was blackmarked and anything connected to it was under a great deal of scrutiny, Phil needed to have an organization capable of standing on its own before introducing it to the rather large collection of exceptions to the Index. "That I am no longer officially an agent of SHIELD does not change the fact that having been one was a fundamental part of pulling myself together after losing Matt."

 "I know you don't like to speculate," Trish implored, "but we know the Civil War is in the works for the Supernatural Cinematic Universe. The Index is the closest thing to Registration we've seen – do you think it will be expanded to become the basis for the movie? Your character wasn't involved in that comic arc, but what role would you like to see Kyria take in it?"

 "I don't like to speculate," she lied smoothly, swallowing down bile that left a sour taste in the back of her throat, "so I can't really say if the Index will be expanded or not. As for the Index itself, well, I agree with the sentiment of keeping an eye on people who have acquired non-natural abilities, especially those who use those abilities to endanger others. I don't always agree with the practical aspects of how the Index is handled. And given how the Index went public in the fall of SHIELD, I don't think I'll ever agree to putting the ninjas on it," Dawn said decisively.

 "That's all the time we have, but a big thank you to Valerie McCartney from TV's Supernatural. See it Mondays this fall, only on AO3!"

 With another fake smile and a handshake, Dawn escaped to find Peggy arguing with the make-up crew that no, that was not the proper color of her lipstick, she didn't care what the label said, that was not the right shade of red.

 "Sorry to steal Hayley," Dawn said with a wide smile, "but are you done with her? We need to practice our lines."

 "Actually," Peggy jumped in, "I think I misplaced my script. Anyone have an extra we can borrow?"

 One of the girls produced a copy. "Lauren's always making off with people's scripts. She says it helps her stay in character. It's good to keep an extra or three around."

 "Thank you," Peggy said gratuitously. "I will keep that in mind. Who is Lauren?" she said in an undertone as Dawn grabbed her elbow and dragged her away.

 "Probably Bela. That sounds like something she would do. Could be Nat, but I haven't seen her since we got back, so she probably isn't around on the set. Good thinking on the script, by the way."

 "Does Gabriel usually do things without offering an explanation?"

 Dawn snorted. "Even discounting the superiority complex inherent in being an angel, he spent too long as a trickster, doing whatever he wanted and answering to no one. Explanations are hardly his forte." She smiled and nodded at some random person looking her way as they walked by. "I know I said to play along, but this is really starting to freak me out. Not to mention, if I smile any harder, my cheeks are going to fall off. Just one more reason why I never went public as Orion."

 "This place is very crowded," Peggy noted.

 "If that script is anything like the interview I just had, I'm going to need someplace private to freak out. Just a little," she added, hanging onto her false smile with all the tenacity of someone who had argued with Nicholas Fury and not only survived but _won_. "I don't suppose we have trailers?"

 Peggy flashed her a conspiratorial smile. "This I can handle."

 With a bright smile, Dawn suspected was every bit as fake as her own, Peggy accosted the first young man she saw. "I feel rather silly, but I seem to have got turned around. Could you point me toward the trailers?"

 "Oh, absolutely Ms. Atwell. Just go down that hall, make a left past the House Party set, and a right at the holodeck Sainte Claire stage, and you'll see the exit."

 "I greatly appreciate your assistance," Peggy said sweetly.

 ***

 One trailer was labeled "V. McCartney." "That's what Trish called me," Dawn said, opening the door and waving Peggy in.

 Dawn went in and closed the door behind her, sagging back against the door. She closed her eyes and took a long deep breath. "Sorry," she said, offering Peggy a rueful half shrug. "This must be how you've been feeling all week."

 "Completely, utterly, and overwhelmingly out of depth?" Peggy offered. "As though everything was like what you know and entirely unalike at the same time? Where every helpful hand holds more unfamiliarity?"

"Yeah," she agreed with a grimace.

 "Don't get me wrong. This is preferable to burning to death because Dottie's associates drugged Elliot and sent him to work."

 "But better than burning to death isn't exactly high praise."

 "I'm part of the reason James has spent so much time hiding upstairs. Not that I blame him," Peggy added quickly. "What was done to him was simply beastly. And the fact that it was Hydra is . . . simply beyond words. But we are reminders to the other of what each has lost and it is . . . jarring." Peggy rubbed her arms and made a derisive noise. "And I'm hiding from Steve. _Steve._ "

 "You and James should start a club," Dawn said with a forced smirk.

 "And you could come make us little . . . paper birds," Peggy returned, waving a hand at the brightly colored collection on the low table.

 Dawn stepped over to get a closer look. "Paper cranes," she concluded. "And a rather scary amount of Post-its." She turned to the mobile-like thing hanging from the ceiling. "And that looks like a paper crane made from paper cranes. Probably took forever. Clearly Val likes origami."

 "Is that what this?"

 "Mm-hmm. Japanese art of paper folding."

 "Alright." Peggy pointed down at the coffee table. "Is that supposed to be you?"

 "That" was a copy of TV Guide magazine with Supernatural and its star on the cover.

 "I look like I'm going to rip someone's throat out with my teeth while wearing Natasha's catsuit."

 Peggy patted her shoulder. "Valerie looks like she's going to rip someone's throat out with her teeth."

 "While pretending to be me," Dawn interjected. "My life is a television show based off of _comic books_. And right around now in the comics I was going crazy and deciding that turning into my father was a great idea!"

 "Are you living in a comic book?" Peggy asked archly.

 "Not that I know of," Dawn replied darkly.

 "Do you think becoming your father is a capital idea?"

 " _Hell_ no."

 "I won't ask if you are crazy, because, quite frankly, I think we all are. _But_ ," Peggy said, "you are not simply Valerie's character. You are a real person with real choices and a real life."

 "Yeah, I'm a real boy."

 Peggy glared nearly as effectively as Missouri.

 "Sorry."

 "Perhaps we should worry less about our counterparts and more about why we are here." Peggy rattled the script.

 Dawn sighed. "Alright, Doc. Let's see the prognosis."

 ***

 "Fate is looking to kill you because she thinks you are supposed to be dead. If she knew you were the reason the Apocalypse – the _Apocalypse_ – has been indefinitely postponed, she would want to kill you even more because that should have been her retirement. She wants to kill _me_ , because I should have died without you, and she wants to kill Elliot for reasons I'm not entirely clear on but involve him supposedly dying much earlier. Meanwhile, your delinquent trickster archangel uncle is sneaking around trying to wake his father up without anyone knowing because God is just about the only one who can make Atropos stay her hand. One can only presume he sent us here to keep us away from Atropos and will retrieve us when she's gone. Does that about cover it, Dawn? Dawn? What – are you alright? Is there anything I can do to help?"

 Her chest protested unlocking enough to allow her lungs room to expand. The air burned. "I just need a minute," Dawn said hoarsely. She coughed in an attempt to clear her throat. Breathing hurt. "I just need a minute. Clint's the closest thing I have to a brother. Laura did her level best to break my hand when she gave birth to Cooper, yelling all the while that she was going to castrate Clint, preferably with one of his own arrows. Lila's birth had less screaming but – I'm Cooper's _godmother._ I just . . . I need a minute to wrap my head around the fact that Gabriel is the only reason Clint didn't kill me fifteen years ago. I mean, I knew he had been assigned to kill me, but it’s just – it’s – I can’t imagine anything else. It’s my life. It happened. I can’t – I can’t picture a branch where it didn’t happening."

 "I apologize," Peggy said with awkward sincerity. "Perhaps learning the reasoning behind our present situation was not the best thing in your already unsettled state."

 "No." She shook her head. "No, it's – we needed to know what was going on. I just –" Dawn gave a self-deprecating huff of a laugh. "The more active I become, the more the universe finds a way to trip me up. That's life, I guess."

 Peggy nodded. "It does appear so." She paused. "Now, I know I'm rather abominable at cheering anyone up, but I know from experience that work is an excellent distraction from personal problems." She held up the TV Guide. "Shall we research our covers?"

 "Might as well. We may be stuck here for a while."

 Dawn found a slim laptop and, on a whim, slid her finger over the scanner. It blinked green. "Valerie and I have the same fingerprints. That's . . . kind of freaky."

 Peggy thumbed through the magazine. "According to this, Valerie McCartney is from New York, born January 6, 1984."

 "I became famous as Orion in New York, but strictly speaking, I’m pretty sure I was born somewhere in the Middle East. My SHIELD paperwork says Arizona and New Jersey, depending on which name was on the file." Something in her chest loosened at the difference.

 "And your birthday?" Peggy pressed.

 "I was born so long ago, that with climate shifts, and variable regional borders, and changing calendar methodologies, I could not begin to tell you when my birthday is. The files say May 1 and October 15, 1984, but that's because Clint got Phil drunk and had him throw darts at a calendar. Believe me," Dawn added, "I've been ragged on plenty for not having a 'proper' birthday. As for my age, well . . . I'm old. You want more specific than that, I'd have to ask the flying spaghetti monster." She then countered by pulling up Hayley Atwell on IMDB and Wikipedia. "Hayley Atwell is a dual American-UK citizen, born April 5, 1982. Ha! You're two years older than me here."

 "Valerie had a recurring role in some sort of comedy show."

 "Hayley played a major character in a mini-series based on a book where the problems with building a cathedral are a metaphor of the interactions of the characters."

 "Really?"

 "Yeah, Becky and Charlie got into an argument about it on the ninjas boards. I think Ash egged them on."

 "Your actress keeps a lot of books," Peggy noted.

 "There are worse things to keep," Dawn said, abandoning the computer to investigate the bookcase. Strangely – or fortunately – enough, she was familiar with many of the titles. "Looks like she's currently reading – or re-reading – _The Lord of the Rings."_

 "She's reading what?"

 "Huh? Oh, right. _The Lord of the Rings_. It's sort of the sequel to _The Hobbit_. Tolkien expanded that universe a lot. Don't tell Becky you never heard of it. She'll make you read the books and then tie you to the couch to watch all twelve hours of the extended movies. Depending on their moods, half the people in that house might help her."

 "Very well," Peggy replied. "You will need to procure a copy for me when we return."

 There was a knock in the trailer door and a woman stuck her head in. "Val – oh good, you're both here. C'mon, we need you in the chair five minutes ago."

 "Chair?" Dawn asked.

 "Make-up," Peggy explained. "Hopefully they won't offer me the wrong red this time. Let us see how well we can act at acting, shall we?"

 Dawn laughed.

 ***

 "Supernatural scene twenty-nine, take one. Marker!"

 ***

 " _Thank you_ for not letting me burn to death but would any of this have happened if you hadn't gallivanted into my timeline?" Peggy snapped waspishly.

 "I didn't ask to go back in time!" Dawn snapped back angrily. "You think I _wanted_ to get stabbed by yet another heavenly hitman who refuses to me alone? SHIELD became a terrorist organization on the five o'clock news – my ninjas _needed_ me and I was stuck getting my head fucked over by ghosts of the past!"

 "Perhaps SHIELD wouldn't have been infested by Hydra if I had been around to lead it!"

 "Newsflash!" Dawn retorted, getting in the other woman's face. "I always went back! It wasn't some spur of the moment freak accident – it was a _closed time loop_. My presence in 1950 affected a lot of little things that rippled out and affected me _long_ before I was ever in a position to go back at all!"

 "How does that even make sense?!"

 "It's temporal mechanics, it's there to give us all a headache."

 " _You're_ giving me a headache."

 "That's acting your age."

 ***

 "Really great, girls. Really great stuff. Good work on your rehearsing. It usually takes you a few more tries to work up that sort of emotion. Really great."

 Feeling rather like fighting another Chitauri invasion would have been less emotionally draining, Dawn forced a smile at the director.

 ***

 Peggy collapsed on the couch in Dawn's trailer. "I feel like my skin was scraped raw and I was then rolled in salt."

 Dawn could only grunt from her sprawl on the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

For Peggy, adjusting to living as fictional character in an alternate universe was easier than adjusting to living sixty-three years into the future. Especially when she could get a lot of mileage out of being the "new actress on set," and just had to smile and ask politely in her very British accent to have the (male) crew rushing to help her out.

 ("Agent Carter was my breakout role," she told Dawn with a demure smile.)

 For Dawn, on the other hand –

 "I had service on Asgard!" Dawn exclaimed, staring at her phone as if it had personally betrayed her.

 "You had phone service on another planet?" Peggy asked in disbelief.

 "Technically it's another realm, but I still had phone service. My phone worked! And – and now it doesn't."

 "It still turns on," Peggy said awkwardly, trying to be comforting.

 "There's a prop phone that looks just like this so if this didn't turn on I think I'd probably be hyperventilating a little bit," Dawn said through gritted teeth.

 "It's a phone," Peggy said flatly, probably thinking she was overreacting.

 "I'm not overreacting!" Dawn exclaimed. "I had service on Asgard! Tony wants to run a million scans on me and my phone to find out why! This phone is almost as much a part of me as my sword is and I can't access that! I could barely access this! And it says 'no service.' It has never told me 'no service' before! Never!"

 She glared at Peggy, breathing heavily.

 "Okay, so maybe I'm overreacting a little," she admitted.

 "Just a little," Peggy agreed, handing her a bottle of cold water.

 Dawn took a gulp and held the rest of it to her forehead. "There's no supernatural here," she said quietly, "no magic. Probably no aliens or angels either. There's just – blah. Mundane."

 "Is that a bad thing?" Peggy asked seriously. "You're not going to die without magic, are you? Have you experienced any other possible symptoms?"

 Dawn blinked, completely blindsided by that particular worst-case scenario. "Ah . . . no? No idea how my general agelessness would react to a world without magic, but old age isn't really a danger. In fact, without possible angelic hitmen, I'd probably be safer."

 "So what's the problem?"

 "You know that feeling of static electricity? The feel of it, right as it's gathering, right before the lightning strikes?"

 "I'm familiar with static shocks. Never been struck by lightning," Peggy returned.

 "I've lived with that feeling under my skin for as long as I can remember," Dawn admitted, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. "I know most people don't but . . . it – it's normal for me. And then I come here and it's gone. And it probably feels to me what sticking their finger in an electrical outlet would be like for the average person. I'm probably as close to normal human baseline as I'm ever going to get and I'm pretending to be an actress pretending to be me and I'd almost rather have hot metal spikes jabbed under my fingernails because that I would know how to deal with. What does say about me?"

 "That normal is vastly overrated?" Peggy offered.

 Dawn snorted, the sound coming out borderline hysterical.

 "You're not human," Peggy continued, "so it's rather foolish to compare yourself to a subjectively human 'normal.' Just a couple weeks ago, 'normal' for me was the expectation of and pressure for marriage and children. Not that here's anything wrong with that," she quickly added. "But I failed to understand why I had to give up my life in order to do that, to be . . . normal. I still can't. I refuse to give up on what I want just because someone says I shouldn't want it. Now, of course, my normal is radically different and I'm hiding from the –" Peggy broke off and sighed. "I'm hiding from Steve, while I try to establish a new life." She sighed. "I spent years living with the fact that he was dead. Now he's not and I'm hiding from him."

 "Your death was defined by your connection to Steve," Dawn pointed out. That damned obituary that haunted her for all those months in 1950, yet ultimately showed her the way home. "As I am fairly certain your appearance now will inevitably be defined by him as well, despite our efforts to keep you out of the public's eye, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to have a life before the media twists it around to suit their own interpretations. Being famous _sucks_."

 "I'm quite certain it does," Peggy agreed.

 "Without my phone, I don't have Darcy's wonderful pop culture catch-up playlists," Dawn apologized. That phone worked on _Asgard_. She felt its absence now like a phantom limb.

 "I'll just have to ask the crewmen for recommendations then."

 "Don't you think you're working the 'starstruck British actress' angle a little hard?"

 "No harder than I've worked roles in the past. The girls at my old boarding house thought I worked as a telephone operator."

 Dawn snorted. "They obviously didn't know you very well."

 "The average person only sees what they expect to see," Peggy continued. "And since you have more scenes than I do, I need to occupy myself."

 "I'll concede that point." Checking the time, Dawn added, "Speaking of scenes, I'm about due to confront the cruel, capriciousness of Fate."

 ***

 Speaking of cruel and capricious whims of fate –

 Hayley Atwell owned copies of the _Supernatural_ comics.

 Not all of them, because there apparently were a lot, going back years, if not decades, but when Peggy got a driver to take her to Hayley's apartment, she found her counterpart's illicit source material.

 "To help her understand the origins of her character, most likely," Peggy pointed out.

 On the cover of the first comic Dawn saw, a woman in an impractically tight black outfit apparently wielding a silver length of pipe, while a second impractically dressed woman in an overly short skirt suit held a gun in a firing stance that would make any gun instructor cry; what either weapon would do against the red blobs of fire surrounding them, she didn’t have the slightest idea. The title blazed "Supernatural: Lost Stars" in lightning-etched letters.

 "That's even worse than I thought," Dawn said faintly, squeezing her eyes shut and wishing she could unsee that travesty. "This right here is exactly why Nat threatened violence over a Black Widow Barbie. I told Pepper not to let Orion become an over-sexualized icon, and what do you know! She became one in an alternate universe. Grandfather! Never let Becky's cadre of fanfiction fanatics find out about this."

 "At least you aren't holding your gun like a buffoon," Peggy said in a sickly sweet voice.

 Dawn returned a strained smile. "People write me in explicit sexual relationships with just about every male I've ever met. Some women too. You never want to be a character in fanfiction. It isn't pretty. Especially when SHIELD assigned some agents to check it for security leaks. I think three of them were Hydra and one is still unaccounted for."

 "That's . . . unfortunate."

 "You're telling me."

 ***

 Even though her reality did not perfectly match the television show, and definitely didn't match the comics, there was enough similarity that the comics could potentially be a valuable source of information.

 Which meant she had to look at them. And read them. And try to comprehend the storylines.

 It was . . . painful, to say the least.

 "Does no one understand the value of a sports bra?! Ughhn! I should probably be grateful she's wearing anything at all."

 And –

 "I guess all those fan pairings have a basis after all," because, seriously, did her character have to make suggestive remarks to _every_ male she worked with?

 And that was just the superficial stuff.

 The scenes with Matt just about ripped out her heart. Especially after Joshua resurrected him because no one else could get through to traumatized!Queen-of-Hell!Kyria. Peggy wordlessly handed her a box of tissues.

 Because Hayley hadn't owned all the comics, not even all the ones relating to Peggy, at some point they switched to online summaries, analyses, and comparisons which they explored in depth over several days.

 It wasn't all bad.

 Phil had his own series of comics.

 Dawn couldn't stop grinning at that. Phil was awesome and often underappreciated for all that Fury considered him his one good eye and named him as Director of SHIELD. Even if her relationship with Phil was a little frayed now, he was a big part of the reason she joined SHIELD in the first place and then stuck with it. He totally deserved to have his own series. Although comic-him kept dealing with weird characters belonging to a society that lived on the moon, which was a little odd.

 No odder than any of the rest of it though.

 Or the alternate universes.

 Because _of course_ there were alternate universes. This was because she told Andrea and Benny about multiverse theory. Grandfather damn Murphy.

 There was one in which Kyria Morningstar ruled hell – she held the throne in more than one universe for varying lengths of time, sometimes alongside Lilith and/or Lucifer, but there was one where she had just shown on in Hell one day and took the throne for no apparent reason. In that storyline she was well on her way to ruling Earth too, in a frankly disturbing mockery of world peace.

 Then there was another where she lived as a hermit and whenever anyone disturbed her brooding isolation she made the most anti-social, paranoid, and violent hunter look positively like a teddy bear. In fact, she had killed Sam and Dean when they came chasing rumors for help after being manipulated into breaking the Seals, and her father when he followed. And then Zachariah when he came to kill _her_ for screwing up his Plan. That Earth never realized anything had ever been amiss. Until the aliens of course, but that Kyria didn’t get involved with them.

 There was another one where she was sort of actively suicidal. Doctor Erksine died young, so there was no Red Skull and no SHIELD which somehow led to Azazel’s plan coming to fruition and Lucifer getting out of his cage and starting the zombie apocalypse because Michael was a cowardly ass. Dean was an ass and shot Matt because he didn’t know they were immune from the zombie virus and Kyria reacted by going kamikaze on her father. Angelic dicks had brought Dean forward to this horrible time to convince him to be Michael’s angel condom but instead he went back to convince Kyria to abandon her ostrich routine sooner. So . . . not completely depressing?

 Another had her ruling Earth at Loki's side, which, no, she read the storyline and still couldn't figure out why they hadn't killed each other yet – ah, they'd both tried to, and on more than one occasion, but it never stuck, and it had apparently gotten to the point where attempts to kill each other somehow translated into flirting.

 There was another in which Matt never died – until he was shot by SHIELD agents; she responded by leveling New York and more-or-less single-handedly going to war with SHIELD. When SHIELD realized it was losing, it sent Phil universe-hopping into the main-comic universe to ask the Avengers there for help. Of course, Phil didn’t properly explain _who_ SHIELD was fighting, so when Steve put out the call to assemble and Kyria showed up – well, she got shot again, and then Phil almost had his head taken off by pretty much everyone. The Kyria versus Kyria issue was set to come out that summer and she almost – _almost_ – wished she would be around to read it.

 In one alternate universe, particularly disturbing because its path ran closest to the main storyline, she joined SHIELD and then used it to take over the world, à la Hydra but far more successful.

 She knew intellectually that comics generally eschewed happy endings for their characters in favor of continuing the series in new and ever more painful ways, but reading the various ways the writers concocted to torture her and her friends – ah, _keep the interest of the audience_ – was, well, the sour taste of bile never left the back of her throat.

 Then there was the night Peggy found _Supernatural_ fanfiction.

 The make-up artists complained about "Val" and "Hayley" showing up the next morning looking like raccoons.

 "She didn't believe me about the fanfiction," "Val" said solemnly.

 "Hayley" shuddered in memory.

 ***

 They pretended to be television stars for a week before a set window glowed ominously and swallowed them in.

 "You're an asshole," Dawn told her uncle as she levered herself off the floor. At least alternate-universe-traveling wasn't as debilitating as time-traveling. She was starting to get overly familiar with the floors of Chuck's house.

 "That doesn't sound like 'thank you most wonderful archangel Gabriel for not letting Fate kill me,'" Gabriel said with a pout.

 Dawn huffed, rolling her eyes. "How about 'thank you for failing to mention the only reason I got out of Norway alive was because you spilled beer on Clint and he therefore didn't catch up to me until after the demon set the reactor to overload and you only knew to interfere because you'd poked around in my memories when I was in the wrong year'?"

 He grinned around a lollipop. "That's the beauty of temporal mechanics, my dear, I never had to say anything. I _couldn't_ say anything. I was only being responsible to the laws of time."

 She snorted and crossed her arms. "Responsible. You. Right. I totally buy that. Know anyone who's selling a bridge? I'll take one of those while I'm at it."

 Her uncle clutched his chest with theatrical dismay. "You wound me."

 "Uh-huh," she replied. "And I suppose you're not going to explain how you tracked down my grandfather."

 "Oh there was remarkably little tracking needed. He likes you," Gabriel added with a frankly disturbing eyebrow waggle.

 "I thought you were carrying a chip on your shoulder approximately the size of Jupiter because he ran out on Heaven?'

 "Nah. I did the same, and I wouldn't want anyone to put a halt to my vacation. Besides, I love a good prank."

 Dawn raised an eyebrow. "I highly doubt your Father will appreciate being the subject of your next practical joke."

 If anything, his grin widened before he disappeared with a snap of his fingers.


End file.
